


'might'

by MadeNightwing



Category: RWBY
Genre: Accomplices and Lovers?, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Or Is It?, Past Child Abuse, Tartaurus, The similarities in their backstories is killing me, a crackship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadeNightwing/pseuds/MadeNightwing
Summary: A deep breath before the Fall. A sharing of scars. A dream of a better world.
Relationships: Cinder Fall/Adam Taurus
Comments: 12
Kudos: 27





	'might'

Sleeping next to a warm body was a strange experience. Cinder could hardly remember a time she had. Perhaps it had been on the farm? Back before the starving and the beatings turned them all cruel, there had been a time when they’d tried to comfort each other. Help each other.

Even that small luxury had been lost when Madam took her to Atlas. No one to sleep beside her there. Not even on the coldest nights when the thin blanket couldn’t keep out the chill. Some nights she hadn’t slept at all, just paced up and down to keep herself warm. Unlocking her semblance had helped, as had Rhodes’ instructions in aura manipulation.

It had never quite made up for it. Nor had her smattering of lovers. She hadn’t had much interest in sharing a bed with them after the fact.

In this case, it was simply that her sleeping partner had the most comfortable bed in the camp. And…he was warm. Burning like a torch, a comfortable flame lightly kissing against her back and shoulders. Pleasant. Comforting, even. She hadn’t slept so well in…

Cinder snapped herself out of the agreeable daze and began to ease out of the arms of Adam Taurus. He murmured a soft protest as she left the warm quilt, but she held firm. It would be all too easy to while away the day between the sheets. But there was too much to do. The new term would begin in three days. The Vytal Festival a day after that. There were still Grimm to collect. Dust to distribute. Multiple murders to plan.

She wrapped a robe around her shoulders, moving towards the map table that dominated Adam’s command tent. It showed all their assets, White Fang and Grimm alike. Projected attack vectors, likely strongpoints for the non-automated Atlas troops, contingency plans in case the virus failed.

Cinder found it vaguely amusing how cleverly the trap had been set. The blame would fall on General Ironwood once the world saw his mechs turning on innocent people. But had he not brought them, he would have worn the blame anyway for failing to provide sufficient forces to protect against the White Fang and the Grimm.

She’d written several speeches just to be sure. She need hardly have bothered. People would believe whatever they wanted to believe. Suggest to them that Ironwood was dictator and they would riot against him. Suggest that he was weak and they would tear him apart. Imply that he was vulnerable and his own allies would fall over themselves to destroy him.

No matter how it ended, Atlas would suffer. And that brought a warm glow of its own.

‘Anyone ever tell you that you wake up way too early?’ Adam’s voice drifted from the bed. He pushed himself upright, rubbing the sleep from his good eye. Cinder’s gaze drifted to his bad one.

‘Anyone ever tell you that you get up far too late?’ She returned. ‘I’m not paying you to lounge around.’

‘You came to us, remember?’ Adam climbed out of the bed, pulling on his trousers but leaving off his shirt and boots for the moment. ‘Coffee?’

‘Tea,’ she directed. ‘Steep it for five and half minutes, milk and one sugar.’

‘Yes, your grace.’ Adam gave a sarcastic bow. ‘Would you also like me to serve you a selection of our finest pastries?’

He must have noticed her eyes on his brand. His lips turned up in a cruel smirk and he leaned in as if to give her a better view. ‘Not used to such sights where you came from?’

‘More than used to them.’ Cinder returned icily. ‘I’m just not used to seeing them placed so boldly. How did you get it?’

‘Would you believe me if I said I had an argument with a co-worker?’

‘No.’

‘Then you’re smarter than the health and safety inspectors at Quarry Fourteen.’ Adam’s grin flipped into a scowl. ‘The incident report said that I’d argued with a co-worker and he shoved me. I fell back and burned my face on a piece of “crate marking equipment”.’

‘And in reality?’

‘The report gets the broad details right,’ Adam said, a sardonic note entering his voice. ‘I did argue with a co-worker. Of course, I was twelve and he was in his thirties, and what we were arguing about was me having to go down a tunnel I couldn’t fit into. He did shove me. Flat on my back with his boot on my chest. And I think I did see that branding iron used to mark a few crates every so often. Not as much is it was used to mark faunus flesh, but still.’

Cinder laughed with him at the absurdity of it. A moment of impulse seized her. She opened the collar of her robe just enough to show her neck. The diamond shaped imperfection on her skin still showed cleanly over ten years later.

‘Compliance collar,’ she said. ‘I’d get it about twice a day.’

Adam actually whistled at that one. ‘They didn’t use that too much in the mines. They’d zap one to educate the rest, but get it too much and you’d be too weak to put in a full day of work. How long did you get that for?’

‘About five years.’

Impressed probably wasn’t the right word. Appreciative, maybe. It made him turn to the side, pointing to the deep scars on his back. She’d felt them last night as she ran her fingers over his skin, but they did stick out a little bit more in daylight.

‘Twenty lashes,’ he said. ‘I only screamed for about seventeen of them.’

‘The SDC gave those to you?’

‘Village in Mistral. Caught me stealing bread.’

That’d do it. ‘Mine preferred not to leave marks on me. Or at least not where anyone could see them.’

‘Then all the others…?’

‘They came after.’

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn there was a gleam of respect in his eye that hadn’t been there before. He moved over to the small stove and ignited the gas cooker, preparing tea and sugar in two mugs.

‘Next week will change everything,’ Cinder said. ‘Atlas will be disgraced, their military weakened. And it’ll just be the start.’

‘Let me guess, Beacon isn’t going to be the last academy?’

It was something she could not say, but didn’t need to. His smirk matched her own.

‘What makes you think I’ll want to work with you after Beacon falls?’ He said. ‘I barely want to work with you as it is.’

‘Not even to kill your treacherous student?’

He didn’t answer. It was a soft spot, she knew, and one that she frequently needled.

‘Think about it.’ The seductive purr in her voice wasn’t for show. ‘Atlas in flames. All their wealth. All their power. Their defenders brought low. All brought to nothing as it burns. Doesn’t that sound glorious?’

The kettle whistled as it came to boil. Adam seemed pensive as he poured the tea, eyes running over his maps as if they would reveal the information he sought.

‘You know something? When I was a kid I wanted to be one of those defenders.’

‘You?’ Cinder couldn’t quite contain her surprise.

‘You really going to tell me you didn’t stare up at Atlas Academy and dream about finding a place there?’

It would be a ridiculous lie to state otherwise. She’d sat on the roof of the hotel and dreamed about the team she’d have, the friend she’d make, the glories she would win. Sometimes she’d see the students out in town, whenever Madam sent her out on a shopping run. Clean and neat in their crisp grey uniforms. Cocky to the point of arrogance, eyes alight with the fire of young soldiers. Getting drunk with their teams. Starting fights they couldn’t win.

Free.

‘I wonder if we might have met there.’ Cinder accepted the cup from him, savouring the fragrance of the Mistral blend. ‘We’re about the same age.’

‘Maybe,’ Adam said. ‘Ironwood had just become the headmaster back then, I think.’

‘I’m surprised you tracked that.’

‘It sticks out. He lifted the restrictions on faunus attending Atlas Academy and enlisting in the military. Most of the guards at the mines weren’t too happy about that so they halved our rations for a week. Made sure we knew our place. That’s when my little workplace accident happened.’

Cinder took a deep sip. It was surprisingly good. The terrorist knew his tea, at least. ‘Perhaps if that hadn’t happened, we might have joined at the same time?’

‘Might have been on the same team,’ Adam agreed. ‘What’s a colour that starts with A?’

‘I think you mean C,’ Cinder said.

‘Perhaps we would have won a Vytal Festival?’

‘Two, at least, under my leadership.’

‘They say General Ironwood rewards talent. Maybe I would have been his favourite?’

‘You would have had to fight Winter Schnee for that.’

‘Those are satisfactory terms.’

‘Would you have enlisted after graduation?’

‘Rank? Recognition? The chance of glory? Couldn’t have said no.’ Adam’s lips twitched, though whether with amusement or anger she couldn’t tell. ‘They say a faunus Specialist was just picked to join the Ace Operatives. The youngest soldier to ever be selected. I think I could have beaten that record.’

‘I’m not sure you would have survived wearing anything other than black.’

‘I think I could have made do with dark blue.’ He leaned back against the table, a faraway look in his eye. ‘ _Ace Operative Adam Taurus_. Has a ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘I prefer _Ace Operative Cinder Fall._ ’ Cinder leaned her head to the side in what she hoped was a suitably heroic pose. ‘Actually, make that Captain Cinder Fall.’

Adam shook his head. ‘You truly are obsessed with being on top.’

She acknowledged the hit with a salute of her mug. ‘But isn’t it strange? Just a few changes and we might be the ones protecting the weaklings in Vale and Atlas. Now here we are, getting ready to destroy them.’

The terrorist shrugged. ‘It’s all a question of greed. Lien. Dust. The power it can buy. What happened to you. What happened to me. It all comes down to their greed sooner or later. Do you ever wonder what might have happened in a world without it?’

In her mind, Cinder could see her. A young woman in a white uniform, surrounded by trusted comrades. Cheered and adored by the crowds. Decorated by her commanders. Loved and feared in equal measure.

Free.

‘We might have been heroes,’ she said.

Adam stared into his cup, face empty. ‘Maybe. I guess we’ll never know.’

They drank the rest of their tea in silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Not the biggest fan of V8 so far, but they did just give me the best fuel for my Adam/Cinder crackship that I'll ever get.
> 
> I mean, it's almost enough to make you think of a 'childhood friends' AU where they don't grow up to be murderers...


End file.
